Beethoven: Ideals Of The French Revolution, Nagano

Kent Nagano: Montreal Symphony Orchestra

Kent Nagano has built a superb reputation on the world stage, not only in the great symphonic repertoire but in opera as well, and has been ecstatically received in Montreal since assuming the title of principal conductor and music director of the OSM in September 2006. Conceived on the basis of an original idea of Maestro Nagano’s, The General offers an entirely new interpretation of Beethoven’s Egmont, itself based on a poem by Goethe. Offered as a tribute to Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, this original work, written by author, critic, librettist and musicologist Paul Griffiths - and adapted into French by director and actor Daniel Roussel - relates the staggering events surrounding the Rwanda crisis in 1994. It recounts how General Dallaire, chief of the United Nations peacekeeping mission, saw the catastrophe approach, and his efforts to prevent it. The music with which Griffiths’ text is intertwined goes beyond the famous Egmont overture, and comprises other great Beethoven works, including excerpts from the melodrama King Stephan and the funeral march from Leonore Prohaska, concluding with a choral excerpt from Opferlied. Reviewing the premiere performance in Montreal last January, The Globe and Mail wrote: “[Griffiths’] text is enormously moving, sparse and effective. [Colm] Feore’s narration was sublime.”

Price: $32.98

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